


What it Was, What it Wasn't

by An_Ode



Series: Undefined but Understood [1]
Category: Daredevil (TV), The Punisher (TV 2017)
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Developing Relationship, F/M, Friendship, Introspection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-25
Updated: 2017-11-25
Packaged: 2019-02-06 19:04:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,105
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12824052
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/An_Ode/pseuds/An_Ode
Summary: It wasn’t love. The word was to clean for what they had. Crisp clear lines, white and unsullied. No ghosts haunted that label. Love was pure, not bathed in a river of red and grey matter. It wouldn’t echo in her head with the sound of broken bone and shrieks of agony. This, whatever this was, had a twisted spine and dripped with wickedness. Like the heaving monster he thought he was, it panted out harsh echoing breaths. Hunched shoulders rising and falling with a life of its own that felt suspiciously like death.





	What it Was, What it Wasn't

It wasn’t love. As little as Karen had experienced in her life, this thing, whatever it was, did not feel like love. The word was to clean for what they had. Crisp clear lines, white and unsullied. No ghosts haunted that label. For one- a wife, a daughter, a son. And the other- a criminal henchman and seven bullets. Love was pure, not bathed in a river of red and grey matter. It wouldn’t echo in her head with the sound of broken bone and shrieks of agony. This, whatever this was, had a twisted spine and dripped with wickedness. Like the heaving monster he thought he was, it panted out harsh echoing breaths. Hunched shoulders rising and falling with a life of its own that felt suspiciously like death.

From that first moment in a dimly lit hospital room and a bed with red tape, black twisting fingers bound them together. More were added as time went on, and suddenly she was so tangled up in darkness she couldn’t find the light. The diner had disgusted her, of course it had, but it had called to something inside of her all the same.

Her rejection of him then had more to do with parts of her own self that howled back in response to such violence. It was not born from a weak stomach or constitution. The violence awoke something deep in her chest. A small little creature snapped to attention as it was fed by his darkness. She was satiated somehow, in the middle of his carnage. Vindictive and spiteful, she felt a satisfaction in watching as those who held power over others, who abused and exploited other human begins just for the sake of it, met their own hatred.

Because in all honesty, that’s how Karen could make sense of the Punisher who resided in Frank Castle’s body. He was an absolute concentration of the ravaging depravity of man. He was a mirror to those his vengeance befell. What power these insignificant, cowardly pieces of filth thought they held was ripped from their grasp and then shoved down their throats, across their necks, in their chests. And they paid for their sneering exploitation with a sacrifice of bright red blood.

No, what she and Frank had between them was not love.

Their connection was more visceral, more instinctual than romantic affection. There was a deep echoing loneliness in both their souls and like recognized like. The holes in her humanity would never be _healed_ by this man, this monster walking in human skin. His loss would never be smoother over by her gentle hands or kind words. They were broken people, the kind of broken that could never be put back together. Certainly never by each other.

Theirs was a miraculous connection of understanding and unprecedented give and take. They did something to each other, in each other. His darkness fed a dark part of her soul she could never explore on her own. He made her feel powerful somehow, demonstrating that the world could be put to rights. That though her life had been knocked off its axis there was still something out there to settle the score and shift it back- one bullet to the brain at a time.

For him… well Karen wondered about that.

Looking down with glowing blue eyes, she eyed the man in black combat attire on her ratty old couch. He was burning up with fever- no doubt infection stemming from the knife wound he’d acquired in China Town- and he thrashed around in a haze of confusion. He’d called out for his wife, his son, his daughter. He screamed out curses at an invisible Billy Russo. He scowled at an unmasked Daredevil giving him another moral lecture.

But then, then she cupped his cheek and spoke soothing words in his ear as she tried to cool his core temp with ice and damp cloth. He turned his face into her hand, lips brushing her wrist by mere proximity. Thrashing gentled to jerks and twitches before he was merely lolling his head about. Now the only word she could make out in his fog was her name.

 _“Karen,”_ he would breathe the word out like a benediction one moment, then a reprimand the next. Spit it through clenched teeth, slurring it into an expletive before huffing it out in exasperation. She stayed with him through its variations. It was the moments when her touch was absent that things changed. 

When she journeyed to the kitchen for more ice or to rewet cloth, his tone changed. Because then, then he would scream it. Angry and hoarse, the two syllables ripped from his throat with an aching desperation. The sound was wounded and made her empathy ridden heart squeeze harsh in her chest. He choked around it as brows furrowed and body lurched towards where she once was.

Anguish, that was the only word she could find to describe his face and his tone in those moments. Even though she would speak to him from across the room, her tiny apartment having the couch and kitchen sink merely twenty feet from each other, it didn’t help. Her string of verbal reassurances did little to stem the on slot when he couldn’t touch her. 

“It’s alright Frank, everything’s alright. I’m right here. I’m okay.” But then he would call out again and her hands would shake in her adrenaline driven haste to return to his side.

“ _Karen_ ,” she squeezed out the excess water. “ _Please, please. Christ don’t… don’t-”_ She flew to his side just as he started to lurch off the side of the couch. She caught his shoulders as she crashed to the ground. On her knees she was level with his prone form and his head slotted into the curve of her neck and shoulder. His momentum caused his skull to smart her collar bone with the impact but it did little to distract her.

“You’re alright. Everything’s alright,” hands buried in the slowly growing length of his hair, she scratched lightly with her chewed down nails. His mouth was moving over bared skin but she couldn’t make out a single word.

Abruptly he pulled back. Glazed eyes were dark as obsidian, unfocused but searching. His hand came out slowly, wavering in the air between them before it made gentle contact with her cheek. Ragged broken breath was sucked into his lungs and his fingertips tightened. When he spoke, the tone was gravel and harsh but the current running under his words was one Karen refused to investigate.

“I can’t let that happen to you…” his words came out slurred. “Not you, not you. _Never you_.”

When his fever broke sometime around three that morning, she didn’t mention his fever haze ramblings. If he remembered any words spoken, he gave no mention. But it gave insight Karen didn’t touch except on nights when she’d drank enough fireball to tranque a horse and she felt particularly self-flagellating. Then, and only then, she would wonder if Karen Page made Frank Castle _come alive_.

His eyes softening on her face, his lips quirking into a shadow of a smile, hands twitching at his sides as if he meant to reach out and touch her. She wondered, in those alcohol filled silences, if she brought back parts of him thought lost. The Punisher sure had a monopoly on his time, the news reports every other day of massive body counts told her that. But perhaps where he awoke and fed the darkness in her soul, perhaps she stoked the dying embers of his.

He needed someone to remind him that despite the brain matter and rivers of blood he enjoyed so much, the avenging demigod in him gave way to a passionate, deeply involved human man. One that used to sing lullabies to his daughter and play catch with his son. One that made love to his wife with more than his body but with his entire self and soul. A military man who cared more for his men than his own life. There were parts locked up in shackles inside his head.

_“Thank you ma’am.”_

_“For what?”_

_“Ya’ hel- help me remember.”_

Sometimes she thinks maybe she is watching with wide eyes as they struggle to break the chains restraining them. Most often, they simply chaff their wrists until they bleed out onto the cold concrete floor of his tactical mind. But sometimes, sometimes, they get a single breath away from her. Fingertips reach out, arm straining as they try and touch her extended self. A moment here, a heartbeat there, and these stolen moments compact to make the unfamiliar foundation she now stands on with a man who is a self-proclaimed mass murderer.

And yet, somehow, she is more concerned with how rare these moments are than who (or what, some may argue) these moments are with.

“How deep into that bottle have you gotten?” The voice on her fire escape, not three feet above her is not the voice haunting her dreams. It was, once, a very long while ago. Now however, it is an imposition on her current musing mood.

“Not far enough for this conversation.” Maybe the real reason she appreciates Frank Castle so much was his ability to bring the sass out of her by mere existence.

“Karen-“

“I don’t want to talk about it Matt.” She wouldn’t turn to look at him. To see him perched on her fire escape in all his red leather glory when she had called him _Matt_ would be too much for her.

“I’m just worried about you,” his voice is low but more than a little self-deprecating. “Is this because of what I-“

“For Christ sake!” Despite her better judgment, she lurched to the side in order to get a clear view of the Devil himself. “Believe it or not Matt, you are not the sun in my god damned universe! Not everything that is good or bad or ugly is center around you!” The dog barking in the distance somehow feels like her fault. By mere shrill shriek she had set off a barking chain. In some small section of her head, there is pride for that.

“I’m sorry.” Honestly, after such a lengthy silence she thought he’d left. “I’m so sorry Karen. For everything,” he sounds so wrung out but she can’t bring herself to give shit tonight. The bottle of booze in her hand is there because right now, for one night, it’s _her_ pity party.

“I know you are.” She finally responses, eyes fixed on the crumbling brick of the building across from her own. “Go home Matt,” punctuating that statement with her shuffling gate to reenter her apartment via window, there is no sound as he vacates her fire escape.

Before he had hidden under a grey blanket on the street like a common wanderer and far before his fever hazed desperation, Karen didn’t see Frank for almost a year. She watched the news, kept an alert up on all web browsers about mass shootings though, as a way to see if he survived the last one. Due to his status as a dead man, Karen had to be smart about it.

It was like a holiday special for those few months. A sick and bloody fifty part special on the destruction and dismantling of the cartels responsible for the Castle family murders. After that though, he was dead silent (pun intended). Not a word about any further mass shootings. Doing a little digging she discovered that _every single one_ had been put down. Frank had killed countless gang bangers in those few months. Then he’d disappeared.

She remembers those moments of horror intertwined with relief. Eventually, the association started to fuck with her head. Perking up at mass shootings in hopes of proving that he had made it out of his last round with the gang underworld brought shame with it. He had a way of doing that, making the worst parts of her stand at attention.

But no matter how much she tried to break that trend, that association, it was still there. So when she heard about the mass shooting down at the docks, preliminary chatter saying the body count consisted of only human traffickers, she grabbed her whiskey.

When he appeared next to her window nearing one in the morning, she questioned her reach for the bottle. Was it due to her own issues that she needed to drink her mind out, forget the ties binding her to every bloodied body that hit the cold concrete? Or, on the much, much worse end, was she expecting him? He never made comment about her choice in spirits but he seemed more inclined to take a swig if she was brandishing whiskey.

She clicked the lock of the window open then walked backwards towards her couch, the one he had laid fever hazed on not two months ago. Blue eyes watched as the hulking figure of the god damn _Punisher_ ambled through her window. From her seated position, she could just see into her bathroom door. His shirt came off in a quick motion, then his pants. Karen never looked away.

Sometimes she forgot the man was built like a fucking Greek sculpture. Muscle distracting her from the beast within. Or maybe it reminded. The purr that started low in her belly and built up to her chest when she caught the deep ridges and angles of his chest and stomach sounded suspiciously like that ugly part of her. Those angles were begotten not from Nike sweats hung low at a fancy gym. These were not ill gotten gains (unlike everything else he possessed) these were earned. Necessary for what he did.

Clambering up building sides, toting a variable arsenal on his body, jumping rooftops and stair wells, hand to hand with trained and ruthless killers. Those scars were just as earned as those muscles. Because it took stamina, it took dedication, and it took obsession to do what the Punisher did. Fighting the tide of ugly shit threatening to drown this city took all that.

It took all of _him_.

Karen cut her eyes back to her window and took an even deeper swig from the bottle clutched in her finger tips.

Because that was core of it, wasn’t it? It couldn’t be love because in this case, love was a fucking _nightmare_. It would do a man like this no favors. Distraction, it would drive him to distraction. She thought about how different the last year would be if she hadn’t antagonized Luis. How his status as a ghost would have remained intact. His life – _mission. He was already dead, remember?_ \- would have been so much easier if he wasn’t dodging cops every day, hiding his identity, switching safe houses every night, all because of _her_.

By mere presence she had complicated everything. Sure, an occasional smile and a place to stitch up his wounds was a convenience, but what else was there for them? For _him_? So determined to snuff out every bit of his humanity and here she was like some kind of jerk off trying to pull him back? The man had blown up his home, burned away the tethers of his past so he could shrug off the restricting jacket of his soul to fight a never ending war. Who the _fuck_ was she to try and change that?

“Don’t be thinkin’ too hard there Page. You might hurt cha’self,” he was in her living room, blue eyes cut from the window to his freshly washed self. Flickering to the duffle bag he tossed on the floor next to the arm chair, she realized his bag didn’t even register in her mind when he came in. He fell to the couch and by instinct alone she passed him the bottle.

The silence was companionable if not a little charged. Back and forth, back and forth, trading off the bottle just like everything else in this _thing_. Karen let her head fall back against the couch and watched the lights from outside her window play off her ceiling. His attempt to hand the bottle back was waved off with a flick of her wrist.

If she was waiting for an inquiry into her thoughts, she would die where she sat. He was not a man of inquisitions unless it served his bloody purpose. With the alcohol burning her stomach and throat and her heart lodged there, she fought her own war. The words, a question so juvenile and naïve fought to escape her lips. But her head, it told her to keep it shut and stare at the ceiling.

“Do you ever wonder about us?” Her fucking mouth was going to destroy them both.

He didn’t reply for a terse moment. The fight in her to keep her eyes fixed above lost to her curiosity. Slowly, her head slid to the side, rustling the blanket on the back of the couch causing static to make her hair stand straight in all direction. Dark brown eyes were fixed down on the bottle clutched in his massive hands.

“Don’t think I can,” the words were terse and clipped.

“No, no, not about an ‘ _us,’_ us.” She leaned more into her right side to point her body in his direction. “I mean us, our weird draw to one another,” she swallowed as she watched his Adams apple bob.

“Same answer there girl,” he took a long swig.

“I think about it.” She flopped back into the couch, eyes to the ceiling. “About what you do for me, what you do _too_ me.”

“What do I do too you Karen?” His voice was lower but no less rough.

“You make me feel…” she scrunched her nose as she searched for the words. “You make me feel powerful, somehow. You call out the wickedness in me I think,” arms extended to try and mime her meaning. “Its… it feels good to know that darkness can be aimed for something righteous, you know?” Silence reigned. The only sound she could hear was her irregular breathing and rustling of the couch. A car horn cut through, a scream from somewhere in her building, a baby crying if she really listened hard enough. When he stood, she heard the clank of the bottle hitting her coffee table and the wood creak under his tread.

“See you around Pa-“

“What I can’t figure out- is what the hell I do for you,” she was sitting up now, sweater askew, hair still standing from static and eyes wide and confused. She looked like a doll with her bitten red lips and massive blue irises shining from the street lamps. He halted but did not turn to face her.

“Do I do anything too you Frank?”

“Karen,” his voice sounded odd to her ears, laced with something that made her ache and mewl at the same time. “I think you’ve had too much to drink.”

“I think you’re avoiding the question.”

“You’re asking something you don’t want the answer to.”

“I’m a journalist, its ma’ job.” She smacked her lips together then stood suddenly on wobbly, coltish legs. His arms shot out to steady her, warm hands encompassing her shoulders. Karen looked up through her lashes but the shadows obscured his features. She wondered when he’d made it half way across the room or when he’d turned around at all.

“This ain’t something you wanna get into.”

“I think it is.” She grasped onto his wrists when he tried to pull them away. “I’ve been wondering for so long. I know what you do too me, but I just can’t, I can’t make sense of why you keep coming back here.”

His head lowered, the absent cap unnecessary in covering his expression. Her hands remained firmly attached to his thick writs, her middle finger barely touching her thumb. Though they were the same height, he was so much bigger than her. A thrill shot down her spine at the thought. Brown eyes lifted slowly, and what little light flooding into her apartment seemed to catch his gaze.

They stood there inches from one another, sharing the same breathe, for what felt like eternity. Karen felt her breathe hitch, eyes sweeping over his face, settling on his lips for a few second before shooting back up to those war torn eyes. No matter what people thought of him, calling him cold blooded was the biggest fucking mistake in human history. This man ran white hot. With rage, with passion, with lust with love. He was like the god damned sun and Karen didn’t understand how no one else ever saw that- saw him.

Eyes slipped closed and then his hands slid up from her shoulders to cup warm cheeks. She let out a deep sigh of contentment at the feel of rough palms touching her soft skin. Closing in the last few inches, his forehead came down and brushed hers. His breath seemed to hitch like hers had earlier, hands flexing on her face before she felt it. With little warning, his forehead came and rested on her own. He dug in then, pushing harder until she responded in kind, pressing her back into him.

They stood like that, a hairs breadth away from connecting the rest of themselves, but Karen didn’t dare move. There was something heady about this, the reason they were so indefinable was right here, in this moment. While they shared the same air, while they simply _existed_ together, it was more than enough. Karen slid her hands down his wrists to settle on his forearms, then his biceps, but never spoke a word.

Tears came before she could stop them. Because Frank Castle could wax poetic and spill his emotional guts with a ramble of words that would surely mean something, but none of it would compare to this moment. Frank was a doer. He didn’t stop to contemplate or get philosophical, he simply _did_. He was a man manifested in sheer physicality, molded in instinct and split second decisiveness. This was what he knew, and this is how he spoke to her.

She was back then, in that elevator bloody and broken, watching him struggle with himself. That moment had been brief in context but it was a single second compared to this, right now, in her apartment. While he had been blooded not twenty minutes ago in her titled bathroom, he was clean now. There was no threat to run from, no story to complete, they just were. It felt like a coda, bringing her back to that moment, but truly defining what it had meant.

She felt thumbs slide across the apples of her cheeks as the cool dampness of her tears stained his skin right along with hers. Sucking in a shaky breathe, she clenched onto his arms tighter, head pushing with more force into his. While it had been wisdom that had her pulling back from him in that elevator, it was absolution that kept her in this position now. He had started this, so he would have to be the one to end it.

Puffing breaths skated her lips, rustled the hair around her neck. With the slightest of movements, his nose brushed over hers in the gentlest of caresses. It slid up the bridged of her nose until it reached her forehead. Feather light, almost imperceptibly, his lips dragged along the same path. She shivered at the feel but made no move to stop or intercept him, allowing such a brutal man his moment of gentle intimacy.

When he spoke, it was to the top of her head and hair.

“You understand?” Two curt words spoken with aching emotionality. He kept her face in place with a firm grip on her cheeks, but those thumbs continued their caressing sweeps to clear away the tears streaming down her skin. Shaking with effort to inhale a full breathe she went to nod but thought better of it and choked out the only word she could muster.

“Yes.”

It wasn’t love. The word was to clean for what they had. But fuck her if it wasn’t overwhelming, all consuming, and heart breaking. Love was too mild, too _bland_ for this thing that had him gripping onto her, fingers tangling in blond hair with tremors of desperation. This thing that had her nails digging crescent moons into his biceps and breath caught painful in her chest.

It wasn’t love, but it sure as hell felt like it could be.

**Author's Note:**

> Well shit. This is kind of just a stream of consciousness and observational ramblings. 2am serves me well. All mistakes my own, call me out on them so I can fix this crap. Current Status: Existential crisis post- Punisher binge.


End file.
